‘People should checkmate their leaders, call them to order’

Diepriye Alamieyeseigha, a former governor of Bayelsa State, was a member of the just-concluded National Conference where far-reaching recommendations were made to move Nigeria forward. In this interview with Edozie Udeze in Asaba, Delta State, he bared his mind on a number of burning national issues. Excerpts.

You were a member of the just – concluded National Conference. From the proceedings and opinions expressed by many delegates based on geo-political interests and ethnic leanings, do you still think Nigeria can remain a united and indivisible entity?

Ours is a country of many and diverse people. With the kind of characters that inhabit it, it then means that leadership is key; leadership is the primary moving force here. Our diversity can be of immense help and advantage if properly harnessed, if well tapped to help move the nation forward.

That is why I said leadership is key. It is the basis upon which the nation stands. There is no country like Nigeria on planet earth; there is none and I can say it clear and loud anywhere. It is a nation properly and adequately endowed with everything. But we have to do a lot more to make it work, to make it a better place to be able to equip it as the best place on planet earth. May be we are the way we are because we did not fight; we did not shed blood before we got our independence. May be this is why we do not indeed value what we have.

We have come a long way together as a nation, as a people. Experience, they say is the best teacher. Our own situation has not been the worst. But having passed through a civil war, and survived, I think we are now matured enough to navigate ourselves and our affairs to be a strong, virile and powerful nation. But in all these let me still make it clear again, that leadership is what we need to get everything together in one place and achieve the best that we need.

What then is the problem, is it leadership or followership or both?

Both. Both the leadership and the followership. There will be no leader, without followers. But leadership is key, because in our society, it is not everybody that is educated. So, when they see somebody as a role model, somebody they can close their eyes and follow, somebody they feel cannot betray them, Nigerians will follow that sort of person. Those committed and patriot leaders are not easy to come by and that is the bitter truth. This is not only in Nigeria but in many other countries of the world.

If you plant a seed and it grows, and it bears so many fruits, the leader therefore is that first seed that will produce those fruits. That is why leaders are very, very few but we have to be sure of what and how they lead. Therefore even the followerships have to be conscious of the kind of leaders they pick to run their affairs.

In all these, how do the people themselves control or monitor the recklessness of their leaders in terms of corruption, in terms of their propensity to cheat and all that?

It is the people themselves who can do that. It is the people who are in the position to checkmate their leaders and call them to order. People say governors are corrupt in Nigeria. Everywhere, even at the national conference, the same sentiments were openly expressed by delegates. But I know that even from the days of military regime, how many military officers out of the lot in government were soldiers. You had the military governor, you had commissioners and other civilians in the government. All the civilians are from that state, from that community. A good number of them reported to their people. What did they do? Even as a military governor, you did not sign cheques. The governor could only make approvals, only based on due process. Who was even the person to write the memo for him to approve? Is it not the same civil servants, the same civilians, commissioners? So, it is a societal thing. It is our own attitude to governance, to leadership, to what belongs to all of us and we all are in it together.

And it is the people that can adequately check the excesses of their leaders. It is the same people who can check this tendency to be corrupt. Yes, they should be the ones to do it. A thief is a thief anywhere. But it can be moderated. I can also tell you my own experience. The most corrupt people in our society are the civil servants. They are everything. You go to an office, your file can not go from one table to the other or from one department to the other, unless something exchanges hands. Unless you see the man in-charge, your file cannot see the light of the day. And if he knows you are not going to give him money, he will not stay in the office. Corruption therefore is in so many places, in so many styles and guises. It is everywhere.

You recommended the creation of more states when the ones we have find it difficult to operate in many ways. Do we really need more states at this stage in national affairs?

That is the leadership problem I am talking about. The recommendation is the conference decision. Being a conference decision I am bound by the conference. But we all have our own individual opinions about the creation of new states. Yet, having served as a governor in Bayelsa State, I know the importance of states. Bayelsa State where I was a governor, was part of Rivers State. Until I became a governor, it was the same situation. So, the state capital, Yenagoa was one long tiny road, real tiny road, not good at all, not even good for a bicycle to pedal on. It was not even properly tarred, it was very terrible.

There was no tertiary institution in the state. The entire state had only one filling station with two dilapidated pumps. The governor, at the time I was sworn in, I had no place to stay. This was in 1999, don’t forget. The military I took over from didn’t make provisions for a deputy governor. So, he had an office and a place where Col. Anthony Ukpo when he was governor of Rivers State erected temporarily. This was a local government chairman’s house, a real temporary place. That was where he was staying. I remember when the first military administrator, Navy Commodore Ayeni, was sworn-in, I also contributed at that time to give him some comfort. Indeed there was no bed for him to even sleep on at night. We then bought a foam for him to sleep on. That was in Yenagoa. He had to stay in a small house then.

So, you can see the advantage of the creation of new states. Today, if you go to Bayelsa State many things have changed, the level of infrastructural development is amazing. It is the glory of all land and the people can see the difference. People who need these new states like we did before now, can definitely agitate for their own new states. The creation of new states, brings develop nearer to the people and they can feel a big sense of belonging. If Bayelsa State was not created, where do you think Yenagoa will be today? Today, we have two universities more from the what we didn’t have in 1999. We also have schools of health technology, we have a polytechnic and other smaller institutions.

If someone had told me in my life time that I would drive to my own village, I wouldn’t have believed it. In fact I would tell you, you’re suffering from malaria. Today, everything is better. People from all corners of the world come to Bayelsa, especially the state capital Yenagoa, to have all sorts of social and economic programmes. The roads are better now, the streets are more organised than ever before.

Given the amount of revenue given to the governors of the South-South region, do you think they’ve been able to justify the money in terms of development and job creations?

Let us look at the issue of road construction. The amount of money needed to construct, for instance, a hundred kilometer of roads in the Niger Delta area can be used to tar almost three times that size in the North. Every part of the North, the construction of roads is easy. In fact, you can construct one straight road up North in less than a year, given the terrain of the place. But you cannot do that, say in Bayelsa due to the porosity of the terrain and the soil. The soil is so porous and there are swamps everywhere.

You can have a bulldozer that can run through a road in the North within a few months. But there in Bayelsa you have to take time to do soil sample, to ensure that the construction does not even begin during the rainy season. That in itself proves a bit of headache to the terrain and the state of road construction. There is no Niger Delta state where you do not spend billions of Naira just to construct roads alone. It is usually a very large project and it takes a lot of the revenue of the state. You go there today you see roads that took time to build due to the rains that fall almost nonstop and other issues that affect them.

Sometimes when such issues come up you have to delay and come back to review the project. People do not even see the cost implications of such situations and what it takes us to have one road properly done. Even due to the environmental degradation, the cost of developing the Niger Delta areas have become increasingly huge and capital intensive. You will therefore agree with me that the governors of Niger Delta are doing their best, given the nature of the environment where they operate, the amount of infrastructures to put in place to make the area more habitable for the people. If you are in government, of course, you have to serve your people and that is what the governors are doing right now. And above all, you want to be remembered well when you leave office. What will you do with the money, where will you take it to? Will you not still remain in the place among your people when your tenure expires?

From what is on ground now, do you think President Goodluck Jonathan has any chance of returning to the office next year?

Oh, let me tell you, there is no President in Nigeria who has done half of what Jonathan has been able to do. Look at the transformation agenda. See the jobs he has created. Today, Nigeria is the largest economy in Africa. You know what that means? The man is a very humble person, unassuming, well focused and does not like to be distracted. May be he learnt from me while he was my deputy. But that seems to be working against him, for in Nigeria, people want you to showcase what you have done to prove to them that you are working. I think that is what the president needs to do more often.

By next year, who is the person to challenge him? I want to know. Go everywhere, people are asking where is the opposition? And Jonathan is waxing stronger in terms of popularity and performances and reaching out to the people. By next presidential election, you’ll see what I am telling you. For now, the opposition is yet to be noticed in Nigerian political terrain just because PDP is still the party to beat. We are already on ground everywhere in Nigeria while others are still trying to gather themselves together. So, Jonathan is still the candidate to beat, given the situation and what he has been able to do while in office. Even TAN has been doing a wonderful job to ensure that the people are very conscious of what the president is doing to make Nigeria a better place.